


Smells Like Home

by BlueClue182



Series: Tumblr Fluff [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, roommate love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-20 08:57:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3644346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueClue182/pseuds/BlueClue182
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Bucky starts borrowing Steve's clothes without asking, and then they talk about their feelings.</p><p>Thank you to Kait for beta'ing like a champ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smells Like Home

Steve couldn’t find his coat. He was tearing his bedroom apart, checking under the bed, emptying his closet; he had checked the coat rack six times just in case. When he started to worry that he had left it somewhere, the front door opened and closed. One boot and then another thudded against the wall.  
“Stop kicking your boots at the wall, Buck. You’ll scuff the paint.”  
“SORRY.” Bucky shouted back from the living room.  
“Hey, have you seen my coat anywhere? I was gonna—“ He looked up from his seated position on the floor to see—Bucky, standing meekly in the door to Steve’s room, hand on the back of his neck, eyes pointed at the ceiling. “I probably could have guessed.” Bucky was wearing Steve’s jacket. Over Steve’s old faded hoodie. Which was layered over Steve’s plaid pajama pants, and—although Steve had no way knowing this, Bucky was also wearing one of his favorite t-shirts. “Did you pull clothes outta the wrong dresser this morning?” Bucky shrugged.  
“Smells like you.” He was already pulling the jacket off his shoulders. “sorry. I can—“ Bucky didn’t talk much yet. He mostly stuck to yes and no answers, five word max on his sentences. Bucky also didn’t talk to many people, with Steve and Natasha as notable exceptions to his selected mutism. Steve stood quickly.  
“No! no it’s okay.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t mind.” Steve smoothed out the shoulders of the jacket. “Just let me know next time?” Bucky nodded. “You wanna keep it on, or you gonna be home for a while?” The coat was a brown leather bomber jacket, which Steve wore most often when riding his Harley, but he liked it for pretty much any occasion he could get away with it. It looked good on Bucky, who was built almost exactly like Steve but in a slightly more compact frame.  
“No, you can take it.” Bucky continued slouching out of the jacket, but this time without the hurt look in his eyes. “Thanks.” He handed the coat to Steve.  
“No Problem. Glad you’re home, I was trying to decide what to do about dinner when I noticed the coat wasn’t hanging up…you hungry?” Bucky shrugged again.  
“I could eat.” They had been working on allowing Bucky to make his own choices, even small things like what to eat or when to wash his hair were still a pretty big deal.  
“Well. I have no idea what I want. You feelin anything specific?” Bucky shoved his hands into the pocket of his (Steve’s) hoodie and shuffled his feet back and forth.  
“Can we watch TV instead?” Steve smiled at the request, then nodded his head in agreement. .  
“Of course!” Bucky laid across the entire couch, and Steve sat on top of his feet. He dug the remote out from between the cushions and handed it to Bucky, but Bucky pushed it back.  
“You pick. I don’t care what we watch.”  
“You sure?” Bucky mumbled an ‘mhmm’ while turning himself around to nuzzle into Steve’s shoulder and pull a blanket over the both of them. “Okay then” Steve stretched his right arm around Bucky’s shoulders, and settled on a nature channel documentary about the desert, figuring it would have somewhere between little and no chance of triggering anything—for either of them. Bucky wriggled into another position, and Steve couldn’t help but laugh.  
“You okay there?”  
“Mhmm.” Bucky rested the weight of his head on Steve’s chest, and Steve rubbed his back.  
“You really do smell like me in those clothes.”  
“I know. Smells like home.”  
“It’s very sweet, you wearing my stuff.” Bucky elbowed Steve’s side, but for his small protest, the tips of his ears had turned ever so slightly pink. Steve reached up and pinched the top of one—and Bucky responded by pulling the hood of the sweatshirt up and over his head. “Oh Bucky.” Steve couldn’t stop himself—he leaned down and kissed the top of Bucky’s head—a move that he had tried once before and Bucky had jumped out of his own skin. Instead, this time, the smallest sound came from Bucky’s throat. “Look, I know things’re hard—but that ain’t new to us. We always found a way to get through things before. And now, we have way more—people understand more now.”  
“I know. It’s gonna be okay. I know now. But I don’t always know. Sometimes I could use reminding. S’why I like your clothes.”  
“Oh. Uh—“  
“Sorry, I’m difficult. Impossible, sometimes. But I’m trying and you are too and—don’t say I’m not difficult. I am!” Bucky sat up a little. “You are too! Scream in your sleep sometimes and you always leave the window open. But—we have each other. To the end of the line, yeah?”  
“Yeah, that’s right Buck. To the end of the line.” Bucky relaxed back into Steve’s chest, and they stayed like that until one, and then the other, fell asleep peacefully. They were comfortable, warm, in each other’s arms. It was the first time in seventy years that they both slept without nightmares, and woke up happy.

Steve woke up first, hungrier even than when he had fallen asleep. He slid out from under his best friend, who startled and sat up straight as soon as he woke as well. “Whoa, hey hey Buck—we’re in Brooklyn, we’re home.” It was one of Bucky’s safest safe words—through plenty of trial and error they had discovered that whenever Bucky started to fade, grounding him in his childhood city was one of the fastest ways to get him back. It didn’t always work, but it was one of the surest ways.  
“Brooklyn.” Bucky’s eyes focused in on Steve’s face. “Steve?” Steve smiled.  
“Yeah. Yeah it’s me.” Bucky crossed himself and looked up at the ceiling—one of the few habits he’d never broken.  
“You want some food, jerk?” Bucky raised an eyebrow at the old nickname.  
“I could eat.” And this time he meant it. Steve headed into the kitchen, but Bucky wasn’t done talking. “You sai—Sam works at the VA, right?”  
“Uh…yeah, he does.”  
“huh.” Steve set about making some breakfast food, their favorite indulgence when they’d had a difficult day.  
“What are you lookin’ at?” Bucky was buried in his phone, and didn’t hear Steve ask him the question. He returned to the stove, which he had fired up to make some toast. Old habits.  
“You been to Sam’s meetings?” Bucky looked up.  
“Yeah. A few times. What are you lookin’ at?” Bucky responded with a short grunt, then looked back down at the screen.  
“Some toast?”  
“Sounds good.” Bucky shoved the phone back into his pocket.  
“You probably don’t remember but…”  
“Strawberry jam.” Bucky was staring at the jar Steve had already taken out of the fridge. “Was a treat at holiday time. Always been my favorite.”  
Steve smiled—first that Bucky’s memories were coming back in however small a fragment, and then at the memories themselves.  
“Yeah! That’s right!” Steve laid out a half a loaf of bread for them—hoping it would be enough to curb their combined hunger.  
“Baseball.”  
“What about it?”  
“The Dodgers. They were our team.”  
“Yep. They’re in California now.”  
“Why?” Steve shrugged.  
“Who knows.” He put the bread into the oven and started up a timer. “The twenty first century is a weird place, Buck. Who knows why anything changed.” He sat down at the table with Bucky, who was staring at his phone again. Whenever Bucky was buried in his phone for too long, Steve started to worry that he’d worked his way around the limitations set on the phone by Tony, which were in place specifically to keep him safe from any triggers. Steve chose to ignore it this time, figuring Bucky would tell him what he was up to when he was ready. The room was silent as a result, until the stove beeped announcing their food was ready. Bucky started, shoved his phone back into a pocket and jumped up from the table.  
“What’s the matter, Buck?”  
“The alarm. It sounded like—“ He looked over at the harmless oven, then back at Steve. “It’s the alarm on the stove. I know what it is, but that’s not—“ Steve stood, too.  
“It’s okay. You’re not going to get better overnight.”  
“Couch cushions on the floor.” Steve let Bucky’s words hang in the air. “Will you sleep in my room tonight?”  
“Do you want me to?”  
“I think so. Did we—when we were kids… can you tell me about when we were kids?”  
“What do you want to know?”  
“Anything. Everything. I want to go home. Start from the beginning.”  
“You want me to start right now?”  
Bucky pulled his phone out from his pocket and Steve panicked that his moment had passed--but he turned and busied himself with the toast rather than let on. Instead of moving away from the subject, Bucky responded--  
“You can start after we eat.” Steve felt the tension he didn’t know he was holding release itself.  
“Okay.” He said it without turning to look at his best friend.  
“Sam says I can come to the VA any time.” Steve smiled.  
“I didn’t know you had his number.”  
“Nat gave it to me. She programmed a bunch of people’s numbers into this phone, and she put pictures so I can remember them a little easier.”  
“That was nice of her.” He split the now toasted bread between two plates, placing one in front of Bucky and the other in front of his own seat.  
“Mmm.” Steve took his seat once more. “Steve how did we meet?”  
“I—I don’t remember. Isn’t that strange. I don’t remember time before it was you and me.”  
“What’s the first thing you remember?”  
“Nothing specific. I remember your mom taking us to the shore. Coney Island. “  
“Did we go there a lot?”  
“We liked the rides, but not really the beach. Not til we got a little older, and then we liked to go and…watch the girls.” Steve laughed, and the corner of Bucky’s mouth twitched upward.  
“I do remember that a little. And…corn dogs?” Steve laughed again, this time so aggressively Bucky started a little.  
“Sorry….it’s just…corn dogs were….you’d drag us all the way to Coney sometimes just for the corn dogs.  
“yeah…wull…you wouldn’t go to the freak show, so what else were we supposed to do?” Steve could see in Bucky's face that the memory was forming as he said the words.  
“Wow. Even I forgot about that.”  
Bucky scoffed. “What else?”  
“You were a pain in the ass, to be honest. Always tryna get me to lay down and take my meds and walk slower and rest longer and—“  
“You were a very sick kid, weren’ ya?” It was the first hint of Bucky’s old accent Steve had heard yet. But the accusation overshadowed his excitement, and he sat a little straighter in his chair.  
“I was pretty sick. But what good’s layin’ in bed when you’re in the greatest city in the world?”  
“Better than layin’ dead in the street.” Steve should have known this would be the discussion that brought his Bucky back.  
“You almost died from a coughin’ fit!”  
“And you almost got run over by a horse. Twice.” Bucky squinted and leaned back in his chair. After all the two of them had been through, Steve was always surprised by the parts of Bucky that hadn’t changed a bit. He still had the same look in his eyes when he was trying to figure through something, and Steve could tell when he’d made something click into focus.  
“Memory’s a strange thing, ain’t it?”  
Steve’s grin once again spread across his face. “It is. But not as important as the here and now.”  
“Sure—when your memory hasn’t been ripped from your head, that’s easy enough to say.”  
“Hey-Heeey!” Steve stood and pulled Bucky to his feet. “I didn’t mean--”  
“I know what you meant, but it’s still. Sometimes I’m askin for you as much as me, you know?”  
“What?”  
“Jesus Steve you’d think I was the smart one sometimes.”  
“You ARE the smart one, Mr. Barnes.”  
“Don’t use that voice on me!”  
“I’m not usin’ a voice, Buck.”  
“bull. You sounded exactly like that nun who hated me at school.” Steve’s eyes went wide and Bucky grinned in response. “I still remember pieces. And when I remember things I get like this feelin’. Like I know if it’s a good piece or a bad piece, and I ask about the good ones more than the bad.” Steve didn’t know what to say. Bucky tapped himself on the head. “It’s all scrambled, but…I can help you ‘smuch as you can help me, you know?”  
“But Bucky. You’ve been through hell and back and I’m…”  
“It’s all relative, ya punk. I read the files. You sacrificed what I had taken away. You still lost stuff. Carter? Me? TWICE. Think you ain’t just as messed up, you’re foolin’ yourself.”  
“Buck you don’t hafta--” Bucky pulled Steve toward him, and wrapped his arms around his best friend.  
“I know I don’t. But I can, if you let me.” Steve leaned in slowly, carefully.  
“Can I-- I really want to kiss you right now.” This time it was Bucky who smiled, and then closed the space between his face and Steve’s.  
Every cheesy cliche Steve could think of rushed through his body from head to toe. His stomach dropped and his heart rate fluttered and--it was a complete feeling of happiness the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since before the war.  
Bucky pulled back first, but just barely, and scanned Steve’s face lazily. He smiled wide. “We’re not gonna get better overnight, you know?”  
Steve pushed Bucky gently, before leaning in for another kiss.  
THE END.


End file.
